


flower crowns

by orphan_account



Series: all your faves are schizophrenic [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Mentions of various other characters - Freeform, Minor Marco Bott/Jean Kirstein, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia Written By Schizophrenic, Schizophrenic Armin Arlert, Shiganshina Trio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 09:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4662096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin sees spiders everywhere, and sleeps beneath a sea of stars.<br/>Eren just thinks that he's weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	flower crowns

Eren has always known that Armin is different, and not just because of the obvious. Armin prefers to read rather than scrap and brawl in back alleys, likes rainy days over sunny days, and has no aspirations of joining the military.

So, Armin’s weird. Eren tries not to make it a thing. He ignores how Armin will ask him to kill bugs that aren't there, how he talks about the shadow people that only he can see, how he whispers that there are _people_ after him, bad people, and how he hasn't ever cried in all the time Eren has known him, not even when the older kids come by to beat him up.

“It’s just how my brain works,” Armin explains. They’re out gathering wood for kindling, even while Armin picks up more flowers than sticks. “My grandfather says that it runs in the family.”

“What does?” Eren asks. Armin hasn’t seen too many invisible things lately, and, truth be told, has nearly forgotten Armin’s oddities. Eren keeps collecting twigs, and Armin fiddles with his flowers.

“My thing,” Armin says. “You know, the invisible things I see and stuff.”

“Oh,” Eren says, and the two lapse into silence. Armin fiddles distractedly with his handful of flowers, and Eren keeps picking up twigs.

“Hey, Eren?” Armin asks.

“Yeah?” Eren replies.

“Um.” Armin says, and doesn’t talk for a minute. Just when Eren is about to interrupt, Armin finally finishes his sentence. “Eren, do you think I’m crazy?”

“What?” Eren asks, blinking. “What do you mean, do I think you’re crazy?”

“Well, that’s why the older boys beat me up. They think I’m crazy, and I want to know if you think I’m crazy too. Because of the bugs.”

Eren blinks again, and is struck dumb. “Don’t be silly,” he says. “You aren’t crazy. You’re just weird. Like your thing with storms and reading.”

Armin frowned. “That’s not, exactly…” he trails off, and finally smiles. “Thanks, Eren. Do you want this flower crown?”

Eren bows his head to Armin, and Armin carefully places a flower crown of wisteria and dandelions on his head.

“C’mon, Armin,” Eren says, taking his friend’s hand. “Let’s head back in. I think that a storm is coming in.”

Armin hums cheerfully as the two walk through the wall’s gate.

*

Armin stares out his window, and he thinks he sees the ocean. He blinks, and he starts seeing spiders. He closes his eyes, and he dreams of the sky.

*

For Eren’s birthday, Armin gives him a small knife. Eren grins after he gets his gift, keeps grinning even after Armin tells him that it’s not that big a deal.

“I love it,” Eren says, and Armin grins back at him.

Later that month, Eren kills two men and comes back with a new sister. Armin smiles at her, and she and Eren and Armin become their own family, separate from the other Jaegers and Arlerts.

“Um, Mikasa?” Armin asks, several months after Eren brings her home like he’s a sad puppy.

“Hm?” Mikasa asks, looking up from the embroidery sampler she was working on.

“Can you tell me whether or not these spiders are real?”

Mikasa barely raises an eyebrow, but she obligingly walks over and looks at the books Armin had pointed out.

“No,” she finally says, returning to her seat in the corner of their alley. “No spiders.”

Armin breathes a sigh of relief. “Okay,” he says, picking up the book on top. “Thank you, Mikasa.”

“No problem,” Mikasa says, and keeps one eye on Armin while she sews.

*

“Eren,” Mikasa whispers, long after Armin has fallen asleep, draped over both their laps.

“What is it?” Eren asks.

“Is Armin, you know,” Mikasa asks, glancing down at the sleeping blonde. “Crazy?”

Eren looks up sharply from his book. “He’s _not_ crazy.” He snaps. “Armin’s just… he’s just a little bit weird.”

“He asked me whether or not the spiders he saw on his books were real.” Mikasa points out. “Doesn’t that make him crazy?”

Eren glares at Mikasa. “He’s _not_ ,” he reiterates.

“Okay,” Mikasa says softly. “Then what is he?”

“He’s just...“ Eren starts. “He’s just weird, is all.”

Mikasa shrugs, decides to leave the subject alone for the time being. “Okay,” she says again, and goes back to her embroidery.

*

“Mikasa,” Armin says one day, when Eren has left them alone for some indiscernible reason. “I’d like to talk to you about something.”

Mikasa blinks, puts the book Armin had lent her to the side. “What about?”

“Do you remember when I had asked you about the spiders?” Armin asks, twisting his fingers around.

“Um, yes,” Mikasa says carefully. “Eren told me it was just because you’re… weird?”

Armin sighed. “Eren is nice about that.” He side-eyes Mikasa, like she wouldn’t notice. “They’re called hallucinations. I read it in a book a while ago.”

“Really?” Mikasa asks. “Is anything else about you… weird?”

“I can’t cry. Eren tells me that I look at people strangely, and that I don’t blink enough. I get really angry, sometimes, and sometimes I think other people are going to try to kill me.” Armin’s lips curl up at the ends. “And, I suppose Eren would count how much I love thunderstorms as weird, too.”

Mikasa smiles back at Armin. “Good to know,” she says.

*

Armin makes Mikasa a flower crown of the ivy that crawls stubbornly up the walls and the sunflowers he grows in his backyard.

“It’s for you,” he tells her, “because I’ve never seen you give up, not even once.”

“Thank you,” Mikasa says sincerely, and they read together while Eren hones his swordsmanship with two sticks.

*

When Wall Maria falls, Armin is in awe.

‘It’s so big,’ he thinks, after Eren and Mikasa had already sprinted off to check on Carla. He instinctively raises his fist to his mouth, forces it back down.

“No,” he whispers to himself. “No, not yet.” Armin stares at the approaching titans, and sprints to find Mr. Hannes.

*

He and his grandfather get on a boat-the last boat, he learns later-and he laughs. His grandfather tells him to look down at the floor of the boat when he laughs.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he orders Armin later, when they’ve been relocated to living just outside a garbage dump. “Don’t ever laugh during a tragedy like that.”

Armin nods. “Yes, Grandfather,” he says, and goes to swindle the guards out of food with Eren and Mikasa.

*

“Grandfather’s gone,” Armin remarks offhandedly to Eren one day. “The nobles sent him out on a suicide mission.”

“What?” Eren shrieks. He sounds mildly scandalized, horrifically angry. “What’s that supposed to mean, suicide mission?”

“They _said_ he was going to take back Wall Maria, but,” Armin shrugs, clutches his grandfather’s hat tighter. “But they can never really take back Wall Maria, not with just sending out old people, sad, old people who couldn’t win the first time.”

“Armin, you can’t just sit here and let them do that!” Eren shouts. “You have to fight! You have to go yell at the guards, have to tell them that it isn’t right!”

Armin looks back up at Eren, stares at him, doesn’t even blink for upwards of a minute.

“No,” he finally says, looking back down at his grandfather’s hat. “I can’t do that right now, Eren.”

“Armin-!” Eren starts, falters. His hands fall down limply at his sides. “Okay, Armin.”

Armin looks back up at his friend, forces a smile. “Don’t worry, Eren,” he says. “It’s just because I’m crazy.”

Eren slides down the wall to sit next to Armin. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess.”

Mikasa finally shows up two hours later to find her best friends asleep on each other’s shoulders. She smiles gently and wakes them up for their dinner of a third a loaf of bread.

*

They all sign up for the military the same day, even though Mikasa and Armin had been eligible months before Eren.

“We’ll do it together,” Eren had declared, when Mikasa had turned fifteen in February. “We’ll kill all the Titans.”

“Um,” Armin had said, sharing a sideways glance with Mikasa. “We’ll definitely do that first thing.”

Eren had clenched his fist and grinned. “Definitely!”

*

“Hey, Armin,” Eren says at dinner. “Did you know that Annie can beat me up? Annie Leonhart?”

“I’m not surprised,” Armin says absentmindedly. He pretends not to notice Eren put a slice of bread on his plate, lets Eren pretend that he doesn’t see Armin give him some of his milk. “Annie is really strong.”

“Well, yeah! I knew that, I just didn’t expect for her to be _that_ strong. She beat up Reiner, too, you know!”

Armin hums noncommittally, focuses back in on eating his food. Mikasa settles herself across from Eren and offers Armin a small smile. He smiles back at her, and only just tunes back in to hear Eren and Mikasa’s arguments.

*

People keep trying to do things for Armin, and he is not having any of it. He can do things by himself, and he is not going to let _Reiner Braun_ of all people try to do anything for him.

“I can _do_ it,” he grunts, grabbing his pack back and sprinting ahead of Reiner. His feet hit the muddy ground hard, and the rain stings his eyes, and he’s only at the front of the squad of trainees for a couple seconds, but he feels alive when it happens.

*

“I hate Reiner,” he remarks at dinner. “I honestly hate him.”

“Hm,” Mikasa says. “That’s not the first time you’ve said that.”

“No, I guess not,” Armin acknowledges. “But I still mean it.”

“Not the first time you’ve said that, either,” Eren mutters. He takes a quick slug of his water to avoid Armin’s eyes.

“Hmph,” Armin mutters. “You guys aren’t good friends.”

“Not the first time you’ve said that,” Eren and Mikasa say in unison. They smile at one another while Armin takes a bite of his bread.

“Whatever,” he finally says. “If you guys aren’t gonna take this seriously-”

“You’ll go find someone who will?” Eren guesses.

Armin sighs, and tries to smile. “Do I really do this that often?”

“Yes,” Mikasa says. “Here, you need to eat more.” She tosses her bread onto Armin’s tray.

“You need to stop giving me your food,” Armin says. He tosses the bread onto Eren’s tray, and Eren tosses the bread back to Mikasa.

“No,” Mikasa says, tossing the bread back to Armin. “You don’t have enough meat on your bones.”

Armin sees spiders crawling all over his bread, and offers it to Sasha instead. He pretends not to see Mikasa’s frown, and quietly drinks his water.

*

The wall falls down again, and Armin can’t take it. Thomas is dead, and so is Mina, Mina who told Armin that she was like him, and Franz, Franz who was always so sweet. And that’s only in the first five minutes, even, and Armin hates that he’s making this sound like it’s just a game.

Then it’s Eren, Eren, his friend for as long as he can remember. He jumps forward into the fray just like he always does-like he did, back home-and Armin can’t remember hear anything but screaming until he hears his own laughter.

He’s still laughing out loud when it looks like he’s about to get eaten. He laughs even louder, has tears streaming down his cheeks when he’s dangling above the titan’s mouth, and he starts crying just when he’s finally about to die.

*

Except apparently not, because there’s Eren again, stupid, _stupid_ Eren who has always stepped into the fight for Armin.

Armin stops laughing.

*

He has the blade in his hand and he’s going to do it, he wants to do it, he has to do it, but-

But Mikasa swears that that isn’t going to happen, and they go back to plan a way to win this, to get out of this alive.

Eren comes out of a titan’s neck, and Armin wishes he could say that he’s completely calm, wishes he could say that he had any kind of reaction at all.

He can’t, and that’s when he starts the plan to keep Eren safe. His heart has always beat in time to what Eren and Mikasa need, and he knows what he might have to do.

*

Jean tells them that Marco died, and Armin remembers Marco, Marco who wasn’t crazy like Armin is but was quiet and flapped his hands like Mikasa does, Marco who loved Jean.

“I’m going to join the survey corps,” Jean chokes. “For Marco.”

Armin pats him on the shoulder in passing. “I’m sorry,” he says, like his grandfather taught him.

*

Armin is angry during the hearing, furious. He grabs Mikasa in hopes that she’ll stop him from jumping over the railing and trying to beat the crap out of the angry little midget beating up Eren, but even Mikasa’s only barely keeping herself restrained.

“I will kill him,” Armin hisses. “I will kill him he will die and he will bleed.”

Mikasa grabs Armin’s hand and squeezes. “I’ll help,” she whispers, and Armin is positive that she will.

*

It takes all of Armin’s self-control not to go after the angry squad leader with all he’s got and a lead pipe, even after Eren explains why he did what he did.

“I still don’t like him,” he says during dinner their first night out of the walls.

“Hm,” Eren says. “Do you hate him?”

Armin glares at Eren. “Right now, I hate you,” he mumbles into his soup. Eren just laughs and loops his arm around Armin’s neck

“I’m sure you do,” he says, and Armin can’t help but relax with his best friends by his side and a roaring campfire in front of them. Mikasa leans her head on his other shoulder, and before Armin knows it, both his friends are asleep on his shoulders.

Armin looks up into the sky and sees spiders between the stars.

Armin closes his eyes and falls asleep.

*

When they leave the next morning, they all start to die. There are aberrants, and hordes of titans all chasing a female titan-a female titan who plays with them like some sick cat and mouse game. It-she-whatever looks at him, too, even lifts up his survey corps hood like she-it-whatever is checking to make sure that he’s him.

It grabs Reiner (Reiner who he _hates_ , Reiner who he used to have suspicions about) and Armin feels like he knows that Reiner will die.

But Reiner doesn’t die. He spins with his blades and he’s out of the titan’s hand (the titan who looks at she-it-whatever’s palm after Reiner is out, out by his blades but he’s not thinking about that) and the titan runs away. Armin’s head is bleeding and maybe part of this is from that but he feels like he knows the female titan.

“Armin, are you alright?” Reiner calls. Armin concentrates to mold his face back into calm shock.

“I-I’m fine, I think,” he shouts back. “I have a head wound.”

“Hang on,” Reiner hollers.

Armin leans his head back and tries to pretend that his swimming vision is just a symptom of his head wound.

*

Levi’s squad died on that mission, Armin later learns. He waits a respectful amount of time-what he thinks is a respectful amount of time-before he tells Levi about his theory, and also strikes at the opportune time of after Levi’s opened his first drink and before he’s finished the glass.

“Levi,” he asks, “I have something to talk to you about.”

Levi glares at him. “Brat,” he says. “What’s so important that you have to interrupt my drink?”

Armin is mean enough that he wants to say something about Levi’s dead squad, but he holds his tongue. “I can get rid of the female titan,” he says, and he knows that Levi can hear the hidden tone of revenge he hid under his teeth.

Levi wipes away the lingering alcohol on his lips. “Let’s talk.”

*

Eren denies the female titan being Annie. “There’s no way that it’s her,” he argues. “It’s impossible.”

“Eren,” Mikasa says, putting her hand on his shoulders. “Please. If it’s Armin, I’m sure that he’s sure.”

“Thank you, Mikasa,” Armin acknowledges. “Anyway. Here’s the plan.”

Armin thanks god for memorization, and tells seven people the plan.

*

Eren destroys the town, Annie encases herself in a crystal, and there are titans in the walls.

Armin _really_ wishes that his life wasn’t so weird.

*

“You did it,” Eren grins. He and Armin and Mikasa are all sitting in a survey corps safehouse, and Armin is holding his first ever alcoholic beverage in his hands.

“Now all you have to do is get rid of all the titans,” Mikasa jokes, and Armin spits his mouthful of whiskey all over the floor. He chokes on the stuff that’s still in his mouth, and Mikasa and Eren both hit him on the back way too hard.

“ _No_ ,” he finally chokes out. “Oh my god, Eren just destroyed a city and you’re-no, no, no. Mikasa, you aren’t funny.”

Eren and Mikasa both laugh. “You’ve said that before,” Eren jokes.

“I hate you,” Armin laughs. 

He puts his alcohol back on the table, reminds Eren “Hey, at least I didn’t spit _mine_ over the edge of the Wall Rose-” gets a slap to the back of the head for his troubles.

They’re going to go out to repair the wall tomorrow, where somebody (another slap to the back of the head, lighter, though) kicked a hole in it. They’re going out tomorrow, but tonight they’re all friends and they can wait a little bit.

Armin kills a spider later that night, and he sees the ocean in his dreams.

“You’re both coming to the ocean with me,” he swears to Mikasa and Eren. “We’re going to see the entire world.”

“Um,” Mikasa says, glancing at Eren. “We’ll definitely do that first thing.”

Armin grins. “Definitely,” he says, and he feels alive.


End file.
